ESCONDIDO HIRING COPS TO HELP FILL RASH OF VACANCIES

Escondido has started hiring police officers to fill a rash of vacancies that have been blamed on pay reductions during the recession and pension cuts last year.

The Police Department has 149 officers, down from 170 before the recession. Department statistics show that crime increased in Escondido last year after several years of steady decline.

City Manager Clay Phillips said this week that three officers have been hired, three more are in the Police Academy, and the city began accepting applications for three additional spots last week.

“We need to make sure we have enough people, and I think we’re on the right track now,” Phillips said.

The nine hires will bring the number of officers to 158, a total that has been considered full staffing since the City Council froze 12 positions during the economic collapse four years ago.

Mike Garcia, president of the labor union representing Escondido police officers, said he was pleased to see the city placing a higher priority on filling the vacancies.

“We’re understaffed — there’s no way around that,” Garcia said. “From our perspective, it’s a huge problem that needs to be dealt with.”

But Garcia said the problem can’t be solved quickly. He said the number of vacancies is probably closer to 25 than 21 because of officers on leave and upcoming retirements.

And he said it’s more difficult for Escondido to quickly fill vacancies because the department’s relatively low pay and pensions make it nearly impossible to attract veteran officers from other departments.

Consequently, the new hires must spend four months in the Police Academy to get trained. Meanwhile, other officers retire or leave for other departments, Garcia said.

Typical annual pay, including all compensation and benefits, for an Escondido police officer was between $80,000 and $95,000 in 2010, among the lowest in the county. And Escondido was the only city in the region to eliminate “step” increases, or automatic pay hikes based on years of service, during the recession.

About a dozen officers have transferred from Escondido to other law enforcement agencies in recent years because of pay, while hardly any officers have transferred from other agencies to Escondido, he said.

“The department is going to have to be continually hiring officers for three to five years to catch up,” Garcia said.

And Garcia said it typically takes two years for a new officer to become fully effective because of all the training required.

Councilwoman Olga Diaz, whose husband is an Escondido police lieutenant, said the city should have been more aggressive about filling the vacancies.

“We could have gone faster and tried harder,” she said.

Diaz also said hiring rookie officers could backfire if the city isn’t picky enough.

“Hiring the wrong officer can become an expensive lawsuit later,” she said.

Mayor Sam Abed said the city is doing the right thing now that it is recovering from the recession.

“These hires will bring us to full staffing,” he said. “Public safety is our No. 1 priority.”

Garcia said he understood that the city has had other priorities since finances began to strongly rebound last year thanks primarily to surging sales tax.

Those have included restoring Friday service at City Hall, which happened in late January, and hiring staff for the Del Dios Road fire station, which began in December.

“It was the right move to prioritize fire because that station needed to be staffed,” Garcia said. “We’re not trying to pick a fight with the city. We’ve been working hard to strengthen our relationships with City Hall.”

Garcia, who was recently re-elected to a second one-year term as union president, said he’d like to see the council restore the number of police officers to 170.

Phillips, the city manager, said he might recommend that the council consider making such a move during budget hearings this spring.

But Phillips said the city still has many competing financial priorities. And he also said the total number of officers isn’t always as important as how they’re deployed, adding that he believes bike patrols and creative policing can help as much as extra officers.